This invention relates to wire racks for supporting food, and more particularly to an improved wire rack for supporting food such as fried chicken in a pressure fryer and subsequently supporting and displaying that food in a single rack bun pan or a double rack bunn pan.
In the fried chicken industry, as in many other food service industries, the food is prepared in several stages including a frying stage and a display stage. In the frying stage, pieces of chicken are placed on wire racks which are subsequently placed in high pressure fryers. One of the most popular fryers used in the industry is the pressure fryer made by Henny Penny. In the display stage, the rack supporting the fried chicken is removed from the pressure fryer and taken to the display area, where customers are able to view the fried chicken. Ideally, the rack supporting the fried chicken is placed directly into a single rack bunn pan or double rack bunn pan. However, this is often not possible because the racks required for the popular Henny Penny pressure fryer do not fit in all bunn pans. Although the racks required for Henny Penny fryers (hereinafter Henny Penny racks) are capable of fitting side by side in a double rack bunn pan, a Henny Penny rack will not fit into a single bunn pan.
The incompatibility of the Henny Penny rack with the single bunn pan creates several problems. For example, businesses using the popular Henny Penny fryer system must stock an additional inventory of racks just for displaying chicken in the single bunn pans, which results in increased inventory costs. Furthermore, instead of placing the Henny Penny rack loaded with fried chicken directly into the bunn pan, a production crew member must transfer each piece of chicken from the Henny Penny rack to the separate display rack. This added step of transferring chicken from one rack to another results in increased labor time, which may be significant when one considers the volume of chicken being prepared.
Therefore, it is desirable to have a rack that may be used in the Henny Penny fryer system as well as both a single rack bunn pan and double rack bunn pan.